Season 2 EP20 - The Hive, CLC - Dan Vazquez, Chief Program Officer

Welcome to Season 2 - Episode 20 of The Bridge to Kindness Project Podcast.

On this Episode you will hear from the following organization:

The Hive, CLC - Dan Vazquez, Chief Program Officer                              00:00 - 18:00

Each episode features interviews on how you can be involved, volunteer, donate and make a difference being a part of these non-profits in our region.  To learn how your organization can become a part of The Bridge to Kindness project send an email to theBridgetoKindness@gmail.com.  Thanks for listening!  New episodes air each week at 1pm on Saturdays.

You can also find out about The Bridge to Kindness Project by visiting our website at www.TheBridgetoKindness.com.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Welcome to season two and episode 20 of the Bridge to Kindness Podcast. I'm Ron Smith. This podcast is made possible through the generosity of EPS, Signature Carpet Care, Pathway's Financial Credit Union, Expression's Floral Design, and Lindsay Honda. On our website, thebridge tokindness.com, you'll find out more about our mission and have access to links to the organization's websites that we spotlight, as well as an archive of the interviews we've done here on the podcast. We would love to hear from you. Whether you're a volunteer or you lead a nonprofit organization, you can reach us through the website or email us at thebridge tokindness at gmail.com. Our guest today is Dan Vasquez, Chief Program Officer with The Hive, CLC. CLC is a dynamic and innovative agency providing services to individuals, families, and neighborhoods. Their mission is to increase employability, enable future education, encourage civic involvement, and promote family stability and support. For the last 50 years, CLC has been a steady and effective presence in our community using interdisciplinary approaches to improve the capacity of underserved, at-risk populations. With a focus on excellence, coordinated care and relationship-based case management, CLC offers a spectrum of services from PK to adults and seeks to engage, empower, educate, and elevate those that they serve. Their mission is to increase employability, enable future education, encourage civic involvement, and promote family stability and support. Dan, you've traveled the world with your ministry, been the lead pastor of a church here in the Columbus region, and impacted many lives through your love for people. Tell us what led you to where you are today.

SPEAKER_02 2:10

Oh, thank you, uh Ron. It's first of all a pleasure being with you today. What an opportunity, what an honor. Thank you to you and to the bridge to kindness. Um I um have a um ministry background. Um I um I'm a former pastor. I pastored a church in Canal, Winchester, Ohio 14 years. And uh I'm originally from uh Zacatecas, Zacatecas, Mexico. A city so nice, they named it twice. Um it's city and state actually. Zacatecas, Zacatecas. Um, but I've lived in Ohio now for 22 years. Um, so I'm a backyard now. Um, but in those years I went through Bible school here, uh several Bible schools, and um I stayed and planted a church, an old Spanish-speaking church in Canal, Winchester. And I pastored that church for exactly 10 years. And then after 10 years, I went on to do missionary work and evangelistic work um literally around the world. Uh I think uh I stopped uh pastoring on 20 in 2015, and from that year I took off to 17 countries and now I've been to many more. But then um that desire to help people and to serve has always been there. But then the pandemic hit, and um in my trips, I would do a lot of uh trips where I would be gone and then come back for a week or two weeks. During that time, I would volunteer at Columbus Literacy Council, CLC the Hive, and I would volunteer there as a teacher. And then the pandemic hit and I couldn't travel anymore. So the um the CEO of uh the Hive asked me to please come in and help more, and I just dived in, and everything I do, I just jump in with two legs, and I just jump in and got more and more involved. And since I couldn't travel anymore, I got more involved. And and it was interesting because at that time the organization was growing. We were uh at that time we were maybe 15 employees, uh, one office, but during the pandemic we exploded. And we're now four offices, over 85 employees, and our budget increased 800%. And uh it's uh it's incredible to see the growth and to be a part of it. And and and but the heart of it all is to uh help people and help people in the community.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

With so many different aspects of ways that the Hive CLC serves our community. What results have you seen from that impact?

SPEAKER_02 4:44

Yes, uh our impact has been felt through the city. Um we serve um over 10,000 individuals every year. We are great partners with um the libraries. Um in basically in every library we have our teachers. Um if you're in a library and you see people learning English, those are our teachers and they are there uh teaching English. Uh we also partner with churches, synagogues, mosques, and uh in different places where we offer classes, we offer them in person and virtually. So um we are currently teaching English to uh 2,500 individuals, um, which today will be taking English classes. Um and um um we also expanded to the entire state of uh Ohio. Uh we are a workforce development um nonprofit. So um our our our first thing is to um it's to help with education and workforce. Um but we we got involved also with um manufacturing with manufacturing companies so helping individuals get jobs in factories. We offer uh certificates, uh industry recognized certificates that allows people to get into those kinds of jobs. Uh we offer the CMFGA certificate, which covers a lot of uh HOSHA, HOSHA um safety and things like that. So when an individual uh graduates from a from a certificate with us, they are already more employable because they already have the certificates that the company, if they were to hire them, they would have to take them through that. But they already say two, three months because they already went through us and they're they're more likely to have to have a job.

SPEAKER_01 6:38

When we come back, we'll talk with Dan about what's next for the hive. That comes your way next. As the Bridge to Kindness Podcast continues. I'm Ron Smith. We'll be right back.

SPEAKER_00 6:59

You're listening to the Bridge to Kindness Podcast. Today's episode is made possible through the generosity of EPS, Pathways Financial Credit Union, Signature Carpet Care, Expressions Floral Design, and Lindsay Honda. For additional information about today's guests and the organizations we spotlight, go to www.thebridgetness.com. That's thebridge tokindness.com. To reach us, you can email us at thebridgetness at gmail.com. We would love to hear from you whether you want to nominate an organization to be on our show or share with us your own experience in the nonprofit industry. That's thebridge tokindness at gmail.com.

SPEAKER_01 7:59

Welcome back to the Bridge to Kindness Podcast. I'm Ron Smith. With us is Dan Vasquez, Chief Program Officer for the Hive CLC. Dan, what are some of the programs you have available this summer at the Hive?

SPEAKER_02 8:14

Um, well, we have right now we're starting our work experiences. So um any young person that is interested in in finding a job, they're welcome to come check us out. Our our youth program runs from 16 to 18. Um, those that are in school, um but uh they can we we'll serve anybody. We don't close the door on anybody. So if they just want to come and for the experience, they're more than welcome to to come and and um and do that. We also run a kids program. So next week we start our our um kids program. We have an all-year-round after school program. So um from the ages of four through nine years old, um from time four to six p.m. From three three p.m. through six p.m. every day parents can bring their kids and we'll uh continue help them with their homework, uh help them have fun, and we'll help them do do different things. So uh we we do that, but then during the summer, we run a 12-week uh summer program from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. And uh we already have um around 80 kids. I think we have space for another 20. Uh, but we'll be running that all all summer long. So uh parents are more than welcome to come check it out. Uh we created a really fun space. We have a rock climbing wall, an indoor soccer, an arena, a running track, and a media room where we have a wall screen where kids can learn how to dance and and uh sing at the same time. It's a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_01 9:48

Where do you find you make the most impact today?

SPEAKER_02 9:51

With our new American community. Um new Americans coming into the country. Um we uh we're we're making, I think, the the biggest impact. You know, we have a large uh Somali population, Nepali population, Ukrainian population. We received uh oh during since the war started, over 20,000 uh Ukrainians have moved into our our city, into our neighborhood, and we are very well connected with them. We're we're helping them during the pandemic. We helped uh many families uh obtain uh apartments, and we were able to help with even paying rent for them for the first three months and helping them find jobs and teaching them English. So um, yeah, that's been uh I think one of the biggest impacts that we're seeing.

SPEAKER_01 10:36

What's next for the hive as you continue to grow and have greater impact in the Columbus region?

SPEAKER_02 10:42

Well, we'll we'll we'll like to uh continue to expand and strengthen our communities, uh our partnership uh with individuals uh through education, um, workforce development, and community uh impact. But um to grow our our our partnership with individuals, we would like to get more people involved. We always are are looking for volunteers. We would love to have volunteers come in and um and jump in in our English classes. We have an amazing um um uh style of of teaching where there is a lot of conversation, so it's not just one teacher talk talking. No, we encourage um conversations, so we provoke conversations in our meetings, so the volunteers are able to come in, meet people. You know, Columbus is very Ohio is very diverse. Um within our nonprofit, we have we have over 80 different languages spoken in our classes with the students that we have. So you get to meet people from all over the world, you get to uh fellowship with them in a in a safe environment, in a structured environment. So um we're looking to to grow into that. Um but you know, just just to get the word out. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 11:59

You make volunteering at the hive so easy. Can you share with those that would be interested in joining you different ways that they could be involved?

SPEAKER_02 12:07

Well, um with um they could uh come into the office, get to meet our our students, um, they get to meet with with our with our uh different activities. They they can also come and help us um with we have uh a studio uh high definition video and audio studio in our in our uh uh east south location, and they can come and they can help us uh record the podcast. We also run a um Workforce Development workshop every Friday um from four to six in our in our in in in our office. So we're looking for volunteers to come and and speak. So if if you're an expert in an area uh in finances or or in the business world or or or on something, uh we we are always looking for volunteers to come and and speak and and to to share their knowledge uh with our with our community.

SPEAKER_01 13:05

There are so many different things that you do with communities. Share with us how we can partner with you to meet needs within the community.

SPEAKER_02 13:12

When people hear our our name, which is Columbus Literacy Council, um a lot of times they think that the only thing that we do is is literacy, English teachers. But uh, like I said, we've grown uh significantly since then. And we are now doing um different um things um to help the community. Uh a lot of it is with the workforce development, but we also do um data analysis where we are uh taking all the information that we're getting and we are um meticulous as far as um looking at the the data and how can we do best practices. So we we share knowledge when we ask people how to partner with us, they can partner with aligning resources, um, we uh address community needs, uh, but a big thing is we share knowledge. We share knowledge with the goal to extend expand opportunities and uh and and our long-term goal is to be uh a sustained impact, not just a quick fix, but a sustained impact. Um if I can say our our in our mission statement, I I don't think I've I've shared that uh with with us yet, but um our mission statement uh it's uh as follows it's to increase employability, enable future education, um, encourage civic involvement and pro promote uh family stability and support. And that's that's why we exist. Um we also run a youth program. We serve about 500 youth in the community where we go into the schools and we take uh we work 20 hours a week with our youth, um but we are in constant contact with them and we help them um number one stay in school. We help them graduate so we come along if they need additional help and uh and then we help them find work experiences or find a career path um to find a good job. Um I have uh uh uh examples of different students. I had a young man that um was into IT, he loved computers, and uh we took him through a certificate program for coding and um he did so great, he he loved it. Well, long story short, he got hired um two years later by a company in Atlanta, and as a 20-year-old man, he started a salary of eighty thousand dollars and he was able to um help he was from a single home. He had mom and one brother, and and he's able now to sustain his mother and help his mother greatly and and his brother. Um that was that's uh that was uh an incredible uh example of of one of those young people that have been very successful in our program.

SPEAKER_01 16:05

What's the best way to reach out to you and to connect and be a part of the hive?

SPEAKER_02 16:09

Um they're more than welcome to join in our website uh clcworks.org.org. Uh or my name is Dan Vasquez. Uh my email is D Vasquez. It's my last name I know is hard to spell. It's V-A-Z-Q-U-E-Z at ColumbusLiteracy.org. Uh that might be kind of long, but uh you can find me there. Um and uh you can also find us in social media at uh in Facebook as Columbus Literacy, uh in CLC in Instagram uh CLC Works um and uh LinkedIn CLC Works as well. We are uh rebranding, as I was mentioning to you, we're we're soon going to be CLC the Hive. So all of our social media and all of our uh emails are gonna be attention to that.

SPEAKER_01 17:02

Thank you, Dan, and for all you do here in the Columbus region and across the state of Ohio. That brings to a close this edition of the Bridge to Kindness Podcast. This podcast is made possible through the generosity of EPS, signature carpet care, Pathways Financial Credit Union, Expressions Floral Design, and Lindsay Honda. Special thanks to Dan Vasquez for being with us today. Take a moment and think about how you can engage with a nonprofit or an organization in your community to make a difference in those around you. Join us again on our next episode, and we'll profile more individuals and nonprofits in the Columbus region and share how they can help people and how you can be involved. Until then, from all of us at the Burge of Kindness, I'm Ron Smith. Make a difference, make an impact.